


For The Sake Of Being Interesting

by SaintClaire



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Bumblebee - Freeform, John Watson's Reichenbach Feels, M/M, Post-Reichenbach, Reichenbach Feels, So much angst, Suicide, The skull - Freeform, Thoughts of Suicide, i did a bad thing, it was cruel of me to write this and post it in a public space, major angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-08 09:03:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10383132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaintClaire/pseuds/SaintClaire
Summary: How John Watson coped after the Reichenbach Falls.Hint - it wasn't positive.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I am very sorry. Believe me, if I couldn't have bribed my motivation to give me something, anything more light hearted than this, I would have. Read at your own risk, please heed tags, they are there for a reason. It is possibly very unkind of me to post this to a public space, and put you within reading distance. Let us hope I am inspired to write something much, much happier in the future. Suggestions, prompts and advice all welcome.

Sirens blaring up Baker St was not an unusual occurrence for the many residents who lived there. Police were a given, when you consider that Sherlock Holmes and John Watson lived in the area. Ambulances were not uncommon, given the elderly nature of several residents and the general bad luck that took its turn in visiting the unfortunate when they least needed it. The fire trucks had screamed down the road every so often, responding to either an alarm going off or an actual fire.

The fire alarms at least, could not be laid at the feet of Sherlock Holmes, since he had promptly disabled every alarm in 221B and 221C respectively, within 24 hours of moving in. The rare appearance of MI6 however, was entirely and unequivocally his fault.

So the residents of Baker St were quite used to the many different alarms of the emergency services.

 

This, however, was different.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The media were in uproar, having be given less than 48 hours to publicly rip Sherlock Holmes to shreds. The common decency on not slandering those dead and buried may have been upheld by the major papers, but the vicious hate pouring in from the public in the form of online blog comments, letters to editors, snide jokes by comedy shows and online trash pieces had no such morals. 

Worse still was that they believed it, because it was fact. Moriarty’s web of lies wrapped around those tiny pieces of truth gave the public exactly what it needed to decide everything in Kitty Reilly’s article was a fact, decide that someone of such intelligence and arrogance couldn’t be real, and therefore annihilate him in every available media source across Great Britain.

 

 

 

He was escorted back to the Yard, under the pretence that it was a request. They ask him questions, beginning in a nice, reasonable tone of voice that suggests they are asking because they have his best interests at heart. When he still stares blankly at the recording device the voices become progressively tetchier, implying that he should be grateful he isn’t under arrest and facing charges. When he still doesn’t respond, just staring unseeingly straight through the one-way mirror they finally begin to yell, slamming their fists on the table. They leave him in the cells overnight. He doesn’t care. They didn’t bother with handcuffs.

 

 

_You machine._

He wakes up clawing at his own head and wishes desperately that he’d asked Sherlock how you delete things, how you remove them from your own head, how you get it out and make it never come back. And then he smacks his head into the metal frame over and over again because he didn’t mean that Sherlock, please come back, I do want you back, I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it.

 

 

 

They sweep the flat for everything, drugs, evidence, murder weapons, anything they find interesting. The Chief Superintendent swans in, a smug smile on his pallid face. DI Dimmock, who never did quite reel in his utter hatred of Sherlock, flanked by a squad of officers who he doesn’t bother trying to recognise. And Sally.

It was the first time he had ever hit a women, let alone floored one.

 

She didn’t even look happy, invading the flat’s kitchen. On the contrary, she couldn’t quite seem to look him in the eye. He sat in his chair as they swarmed in, just looking out the window, the window Sherlock had played the violin in front of, where Sherlock had liked to hide in the shadow of the curtains and watch John strop off across the street after an argument, the window John had thrown an entire carton of broken cigarettes out of, after finding them tucked inside an Italian leather shoe that he had tripped over in the hallway. He just sat there.

 

But then _she_ picked up the skull, a minute look of disgust crossing her face, lips already opening to form the derogatory comment, and John’s brain jerked swiftly back online and no no no no no. He’s out of his chair before he’s realised what he’s doing, catching Sally straight across the nose with a crack the reverberates around the packed flat, knocking her backwards onto her arse.

And this is not happening, the skull is Sherlock’s, it has a name, it is Billy, it is the skull that he has watched Sherlock cradle in two hands and hold entire conversations with and place reverently back in it’s place on the mantle and this is the skull Sherlock refers to as an old friend, and Sherlock doesn’t have friends and one day we’ll be standing around a body and Sherlock Holmes will be the one who put it there and he wants Sally to put the skull down, and he is taking it and Sally is on the floor and his hand is bright red and they are coming at him with handcuffs and then MI6 come through the door.

 

Mycroft isn’t among them, and John is grateful for small mercies. He can’t be sure if he’ll heave or throw another punch if he sees that smooth face.

They intercept the officers coming at John, give a loud and smug explanation to the furious Chief Superintendent, wave a piece of paper around that has a very official looking crest on it, and shoo the detectives of New Scotland Yard out the front door. Many of whom are protesting loudly, arguing about the obstruction of justice and personal vendettas and glaring at John, except John doesn’t notice, because he is too busy carefully, so carefully, easing the precious skull back into its place on the mantelpiece with his shaking hands.

 

The MI6 agents place a manila folder that likely contains several highly-classified documents on the table and leave, without touching a thing.

He goes back to sitting in his chair. The empty chair opposite stares back.

 

 

 

The funeral is boring. Closed casket, tasteful background music, people dressed in black. If Sherlock were here, John would have already had to apologise to various people half a dozen times and gagged his flatmate with duct tape to keep him from making inappropriate comments about the service.

 

There is a strict security watch, mourners come at invitation only. It is a very small party. Greg, Molly Mrs Hudson. Angelo, weeping into a handkerchief in the corner. Bill Wiggins, who shuffles awkwardly in the corner in clothes that smell like the tip he pilfered them from, and leaves before the ceremony officially ends.. A small group of older women with stiff faces with sharp cheekbones and jet black hair, that he suspects is grey underneath the meticulous years of dying. Mycroft sits to their left. A much, much older man with Sherlock’s curls sits toward the back. A couple of the homeless network have left small, squashed flowers, stolen from window boxes and florist shops as offerings at the gates, not allowed and not willing to come any further.

 

He refuses to speak. Molly bursts into tears when asked. Mycroft curls his lip and looks away. Greg stares hard at his shoes as a single tear drips onto them. In the end, Sherlock’s Grandpere speaks, telling stories about the time Sherlock came to live with him when his mother and father became hospitalised with pneumonia and Mycroft was at boarding school. A Sherlock who took the 19th Century restoration of an Admiral’s tri-cocked hat out of its glass case and sliced an entire bushes worth of David Austen roses into the dirt with a wooden pirate sword. John’s face doesn’t move an inch.

 

He is not allowed to see the body. His face, which so far has not had a single expression cross it breaks when he learns Sherlock has donated his brain to science.

 

He leaves a packet of cigarettes on top of the coffin.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

John Watson stares at the floor.

 

Mrs Hudson was out. He knew this. He had taken care to make sure she went out, went downstairs and chatted with her, making her a cup of tea. He knew this, because he'd taken a carton of milk out of the fridge, looked at it, and hurriedly shoved it back inside before slamming the door shut so fast the entire contents rattled. He knew this, because he put an extra large spoonful of sugar in to make up for the lack of milk he couldn’t bare to look at. He knew this, because he had given her a little wave as she closed the front door behind her, promising her he didn’t need anything in the way of groceries.

He knew this, because he stared at the front door for 7 minutes, waiting to see if she’d forgotten her wallet or left behind the grocery bags. That was the rule, Sherlock had said. You have to leave 7 minutes, time to break a shoelace or remember they forgot to lock the door. 7 minutes. He remembers.

 

 

 

Suicides. Suicides were boring, according to Sherlock. Worse still was when they began masquerading as an interesting murder and had the gall to turn out to be plain suicide. Boring. Uninteresting.

The Yard couldn’t tell the difference, according to Sherlock. However, Sherlock hadn’t even been too far wrong on that count, given that they had been called to a scene in West London and even John had realised that what had potentially been a 7 had shot himself in the head, right after he’d accidently shot himself in the thigh and then finished himself off to take away the pain. In some small defence to the integrity of the police force, Greg himself had not arrived on the scene yet to witness that fact for himself.

 

 

It had been one of his biggest fears, that he’d never said out loud. The fear of boring Sherlock, with his preference for sleeping for preferably at least 6 hours a night and oatmeal coloured jumpers and penchant for milk that wasn’t green or the consistency of feta cheese for his tea. Let him not bore Sherlock, not Sherlock please, when the man might request John move out once the madman realised he could have paid the rent ten times over with some of their more lucrative cases, who could have lived on his own and not have to put up with someone who yelled at him for keeping human heads in the fridge and tossed out the delicate mould cultures that lay in beautifully neat rows across the floor of the bath.

 

He would have tried harder, if he’d known this. Come back to the flat with road kill carcasses for Sherlock to do experiments on, swallowed his pride and gone to shop at Tom Ford, offered night classes to criminals on how to commit crimes in a semi-intelligent manner, if only it had kept the genius around. If he had been interesting enough, to make Sherlock stay.

Now Sherlock was gone.

 

 

 

He addresses it to Greg. Not to hurt him, not to spite him, not to rub it in his face that he’s been suspended from the force. Sherlock was the brains, John the brawn, and Lestrade the God of Cases.

No more cases now.

 

All of their cases under review, now Sherlock is suspected of forgery and murder and tampering with the evidence and god knows what else.

 

 

No more. Nothing is interesting. The rotting human organs in the fridge aren’t interesting, the half-price woollen jumper sale at the store isn’t interesting, the prospect of a quiet cup of tea and a biscuit is downright horrific.

He’s terrified. He doesn’t know what to do to make something interesting. Surely if he make it interesting enough, Sherlock will come back won’t he? No. Because he’s dead. Because he jumped off the roof of St Barts while John was watching and John held his wrist and saw the blood that seeped into the ground.

There is nothing interesting left in the world now Sherlock Holmes has gone. Sherlock, who had scoffed at the inner rooms of Buckingham Palace, not deeming them worthy enough to merit clothes, Sherlock, who enumerated endlessly about the 242 different types of tobacco ash and who could study the same 5 petri dishes for hours on end, lovingly watching as magnificent, acrylic shades of bacteria blossomed.  

 

A triple locked-room murder with the victims all missing the right index fingernail would be as dull as the basic solar system now.

 

 

 

One of the few souvenirs from Afghanistan, his gun. He’s normally having to find new and increasingly complex places to hide it, and now he puts it down and it stays where he puts it. He doesn’t like it.

He picks it up, loads it, and presses it firmly into his temple, rubbing his finger over the trigger. It’s easy. Of course it’s easy, he spent many nights doing this. They trained him to do this, trained him to shoot them in the head, and fix the damage that occurred when their own boys came back, dust and blood staining the nice white stretchers. But this is easy.

He’s even done it before, putting a man out of his misery the quickest and kindest way he knew how. So very easy. He drops his hand and wanders down the stairs.

 

 

Sherlock’s room is dark and quiet, absent of the clutter than overtakes the rest of the house. The navy sheets on the bed are silk and hit a thread count that he doesn’t even want to guess at, the sock index lies in all its pristine glory in it’s designated drawer in the dresser, the dressing gown hangs on the back of the door.

 

Perfect order in this room, perfect chaos in the rest.

 

He can practically hear the genius scoffing as he runs his hand over the periodic table pinned to the bedroom wall, this great man, who thought so little of sentiment.   Catching sight of something he smiles, the first time the corners of his mouth have shifted upwards in weeks. A small, perfectly drawn, anatomical etching of a bumblebee is pictured in the very bottom corner of the chart, under the element Lawrencium. This tiny little bee, looking ready to fly off the cardboard. He rubs it with his fingertips, presses a kiss to the wing, oddly touched to find this tiny little fellow in Sherlock’s room, safe where the genius never thought his interest would be noticed.

 

And then his heart rips open, and the pain, which hasn’t come near John since he washed the blood off his hands in hospital sink, drives him to the floor.

 

It is unbearable.

 

It is too much.

 

Make it stop.

 

Please Sherlock, make it stop.

 

He hauls himself to his knees, groaning, gasping for breath as he pulls the paper out of his pocket and leaves it at military angles against the corner of the table, facing up, shifting a domed resin model of a poison dart frog to pin it down.

 

He shuffles away from the bed, bracing himself on the wall, scrabbling at it, desperate to get to his knees, then his feet. Sherlock’s sheets are pristine, he won’t be the one to ruin them. It’s easy, so easy, he knows this, and he brings the gun up to temple again.

 

He looks at that tiny little bee again, safe in it’s corner of the Periodic Table, happily buzzing on it’s way to explore the elements and his fingers pull the trigger and

 

I’msorrySherlockpleaseforigivemeIdidn’tmeantomakeyouboredIloveyouIlove-

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Mrs Turner hears the gunshot. Frowns. That’ll be Martha’s boys then, won’t it? Always messing about. That gun again! She hopes everything’s alright, then decides maybe she better phone the police, just in case, after all there was that nasty business with Martha and the awful American chap that time.

Yes, better call the police. Just in case, after all.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The note was lying on the bedside table, efficiently lined up with the corners of the wood, a paperweight covering the upper right corner. The gun had fallen to the floor, having clattered to the dark hardwood, red smears marring the black and chrome plating of the weapon. His left hand lies on top of it. The sheets remain pristine. The little bee flies happily on, unnoticed in the swarm of activity in the room.

 

 

_Greg -_

_I know mate. Believe me, I know. Sorry to do this to you. Do me a favour with whatever burial they give me, yeah? Blow something up. Bury me with a critical piece of evidence, or Jack the Ripper’s genetic material. I don’t know. Something interesting._

_And hey – for all that he said, you are a good detective. He knew it, even if he didn’t tell it to you._

_Here’s proof, yeah?_

_You won’t need to call him in for this one._

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone can see through their tears to leave a review and tell me what they thought, I would be grateful. And again, I apologise if you made it this far.


End file.
